


This One’s Gonna Bruise

by BeaArthurPendragon



Category: Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Crime Fighting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Late Night Conversations, Panic Attacks, Whump, salty language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-17 06:44:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16969671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaArthurPendragon/pseuds/BeaArthurPendragon
Summary: “Got you something,” he says, tossing the package to her.She catches it and drops it in the trash unopened. He winces. Even on sale, the scarf had cost north of $75.“Were you expecting a hug?” she asks, anger spilling out between the cracks of her words, shoulders coiling in anticipation of the punch she’s dying to throw. She still can’t look at him.(Or: Post-Season 3, there's a sniper on the loose in Hell's Kitchen, and the only person who can help Matt track the shooter down is Jessica Jones--who's still reeling from Midland Circle and the shoot-out at the end of JJS2. Featuring an assist by Sister Maggie, a long heart-to-heart with Frank Castle, and some tough love from Karen and Foggy.)





	1. 24 Hours and a Cup of Coffee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NaTak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NaTak/gifts).



> (Title from the Beth Orton song)
> 
> This is basically the first episode of my dream 4th season of Daredevil. Thank you for the wonderful prompts, NaTak! I really loved writing this one--I hope you enjoy reading it!)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Want to talk about it?"
> 
> "What part of 'it's a long story' don't you understand?"

It only takes 72 hours for everything to go to hell all over again.

It’s been three days since Lantom’s funeral; two days since he, Foggy, and Karen had convened their first meeting to begin drawing up the partnership agreement for Nelson, Murdock, and Page; and one since they’d fought so badly over how much they could know about Daredevil’s work that Matt was afraid their partnership might be over before it began.

_“Daredevil is always going to be a liability to this firm,” Matt had insisted. “If I get arrested, the less you know, the better it is for you.”_

_Foggy slammed his hand down on the table and stood up. “Stop pretending like the only thing we have to worry about is the law!” Matt couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Foggy this angry. “Fisk and Nobu have already tried to kill us both. You don’t get to be the one to say how invested we’re allowed to be in your other life.”_

_“Giving us a false sense of security doesn’t actually keep us safe, Matt,” Karen added. “Besides, if you actually let us help you once in a while, it just might keep us all safer in the end.”_

_“You don’t understand what you’re asking for,” Matt said. “You don’t understand how hard it is to keep secrets like this from the people you love. Believe me when I say you don’t want to live like this.”_

_“Then we’re at an impasse, Matt,” Foggy said. “Karen and I are agreed that the only way forward is full disclosure. Anything less—”_

_Matt stood and reached for his coat. “Then maybe you’re better off without me, after all.”_

Six hours later, in a light early-March drizzle, he’d been sitting on a rooftop on West 49th when he overheard Brett Mahoney catch a body in an alley the next block over. No ID on the body, he heard Brett say, and his face had been obliterated by the bullet. They’d have to print him and hope he was in the system. There was a .50 caliber bullet buried into the brickwork where he’d fallen, surrounded by a splash of brains, blood, and hair that used to be attached to the back of the vic’s head.

Bullet, Matt noted. Not bullets.

_One shot, one kill. Penny and dime._

Shit.

* * *

It had been so strange to call Maggie and ask for her help; stranger still was their errand. New Yorkers are used to seeing a lot of unusual things, but a nun and a blind man shopping in the women’s accessories department at the Herald Square Macy’s earned them their fair share of stares from the tourists. But given that he was on both Foggy and Karen’s shit list this morning, he didn’t have a lot of choices.

He hadn’t known what color the scarf had been, only that it had been cheap and acrylic and reeked of whiskey, blood, and the fake-aloe scent of her shampoo. On that count, at least, he thought he could do better.

“Eggplant,” Maggie had decided, pressing a bundle of soft cashmere into his hands. “Goes with almost everything.”

“I don’t remember what eggplants look like,” Matt said, frowning. This was exactly why he always stuck to jewelry for women, but he didn’t want to imagine the reaction he’d get if he tried to give her a necklace. Maybe he should have gone with his first instinct and just bought her a bottle of scotch instead. “I mean, I don’t remember purple very well.” 

“It looks exactly the way an eggplant tastes: dark and bitter,” she said. “Or like a bad bruise, if that’s more familiar.”

“That,” he said, smiling, “sounds exactly like Jessica.”

* * *

He knows she’s inside—he can hear her perfectly through the glass. Her music’s loud, but beneath it, he can hear her typing on her laptop and shuffling through papers. No—photographs, he thinks. The papers are too slick. Every now and then she makes an audible “huh.” There’s a mug of green tea on her desk but he can smell the cheap whiskey stashed in her desk drawer. He can also smell the fresh spackle and paint on the walls.

Despite the fact that the door is made of glass, she seems to have no idea that he’s there. He reaches forward experimentally and realizes from the roughness of the surface that the glass is heavily frosted. Only then does he realize that this must also be her home—letting his attention roam more widely, he can smell the unmade bed in the next room, and the unwashed cereal bowl in the kitchen sink.

Suddenly he’s not sure whether to knock or just let himself in; he splits the difference by doing both.

“You’ve been busy,” she says, not looking up from her computer. Her voice has a long-practiced ironic coolness to it, but there’s a deep exhale of relief in her lungs that’s fighting hard against the thrumming rage of her heart. He’s pretty sure the lungs are losing.

“Got you something,” he says, tossing the package to her.

She catches it and drops it in the trash unopened. He winces. Even on sale, the scarf had cost north of $75.

“Were you expecting a hug?” she asks, anger spilling out between the cracks of her words, shoulders coiling in anticipation of the punch she’s dying to throw. She still can’t look at him.

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Frank Castle,” Matt says. “Is alive. I need to know if he’s back in business.”

“Yes,” Jessica says. “Next question?”

“Still using an M82?”

“Yes. One more question and then I start charging.”

Matt opens his wallet and drops two Benjamins on her desk. “What’ll that buy me?”

She lifts her head long enough to take note of the denomination of the bills, but doesn’t take them. “24 hours and a cup of coffee.”

“Let’s start with the coffee.”

She closes her laptop and stands up. “We all made it out alive, in case you were wondering,” she says flatly. Even so, he can hear the small bubble of grief forming in her throat. “But you might want to send Misty some flowers, because your bullshit cost her an arm.”

He opens his mouth to reply, then closes it again. Foggy and Karen had told him everyone had survived, and he knew Misty had been injured, but he hadn’t realized how badly.

“Cry about it later,” she says roughly, grabbing her coat from the back of her chair. “We’re burning daylight.”

* * *

They go to a small diner a few blocks away and he throws in lunch for free. Over shitty burgers and oil-damp fries, she fills him in on the past three months.

“Luke?”

“Currently using his powers for evil,” Jessica says, plucking the cherry from Matt’s milkshake and popping it into her mouth. “Claire got sick of his bullshit and moved to Miami. Danny’s gone, too—last I heard, he was in Indonesia, I think. Or maybe it’s Japan now.”

“Why?”

“Hell if I know. He gave his magic fist to Colleen and hooked Misty up with a bionic prosthesis that can punch through walls before he left, though.”

“Please tell me you’re planning to start a girl gang.”

Jessica laughs at this, but it comes out more like a strangled cackle. She’s become so habituated to anxiety since the last time he saw her, he realizes, that even now she cannot fully unclamp the vice of it from her voice.

“What about you?” Matt asks. “Have you been busy, too?”

“Yep,” she says. Her heart’s skittering like a bird’s and she’s started to sweat. “It’s a long story.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“What part of ‘it’s a long story’ don’t you understand?” she snaps, because if there is one thing Jessica absolutely Does Not Need, it’s Matt Murdock’s heartfelt sincerity.

Matt flexes his hands open in surrender. “So. Aside from Castle, what other players are on the board?”

“I was liking Deadpool for this for a little while, but he’s a Glock and katana guy. Sniper rifle’s not really his style.”

“Deadpool?”

“God, you have got to catch up, Murdock,” she sighs. “And there’s another guy, but he _really_ doesn’t fit the profile. Operates mostly in Queens, dresses like a spider. Real boy scout—knocks out muggers, helps old ladies cross the street, lifts garbage trucks off of school buses, that sort of thing. I’d go check him out, but I’m not spending an hour on the fucking F train unless I’m getting paid to.”  

“Doesn’t sound like the type to drop a body in Hell’s Kitchen,” Matt says.

“Nah. Kid wears a onesie as tight as yours. Unless he keeps a sniper rifle stuffed up his ass, I think we’re looking at someone else for these,” she says, taking one of Matt’s fries. The way her stomach is gurgling, he’s wondering when the last time was she even ate.

“You have your own plate of food right in front of you,” Matt says, smacking her hand away. He’s got to stop doing things like that in public, he reminds himself. He’s gotten sloppy over the past few months. “What do you mean by ‘these?’”

“Yours look crunchier,” Jessica says, sulkily dipping one of her own soggy fries into her milkshake. “Your guy’s number five since January, as far as anyone can tell. Same MO every time—tap to the head, usually the face. Vics are all well-dressed white men in their 30s, no wallets, never fingerprinted. They’ve ID’d three of them using surveillance footage and canvassing, but the first one’s still a John Doe, and I guess we’ll see if this one is, too.”

“Jesus,” Matt whistled. “What’s the connection?”

“Nothing but testosterone and white privilege, as far as I can tell.” She pops another French fry into her mouth. “One’s a hedge fund guy from Jersey, one’s a pharmacist from Staten Island, and one’s a luxury real estate broker who lived in Stuytown.”

“You know an awful lot about a case you’re not working.”

“I was curious,” she says, taking a bite of her hamburger. “Plenty of guns in this town. Snipers, not so much.” 

“And there’s no one else it could be besides Castle?”

“It’s a city of 9 million people, Murdock. There’s _plenty_ of people it could be.” She shrugs and takes another bite of her burger.

Later, he’ll realize it was the busboy kicking open the kitchen door harder than he meant to that sent her spiraling—or rather, that it was the sharp thump of the door slamming against the kitchen wall.

She jerks up straight and there her heart goes again, skittering like a bird’s, only this time her breath’s gone much too shallow and her hands are gripping the edge of the table hard enough that he can feel it start to splinter beneath her fingers.

“Jessica,” he says, quickly reaching across the table to touch her hands. They’re cold as ice and he cups his hands over them to warm them.

“Jessica,” he repeats.

But she’s not listening, maybe can’t hear him. He can’t tell what she’s staring at but from her posture he’s pretty sure whatever it is only exists in her mind—or more likely, her memory. And then he realizes her lips are moving.

Eventually she’s able to marshal enough breath for her silent recitation to become a whisper, and only then does he understand what it she’s saying: “Main Street. Birch Street. Higgins Drive. Cobalt Lane. Main Street. Birch Street. Higgins Drive. Cobalt Lane.”

“Where is that, Jessica?” he asks gently. “Is that somewhere we need to go?”

Her breath catches a little—she’s heard him, he can tell, she’s comprehended his words, but she can’t seem to shake herself loose from whatever trap she’s in. Instead she repeats the series again: “Main Street. Birch Street. Higgins Drive. Cobalt Lane.”

Whatever it means, it seems to be helping a bit; her heart is still beating too fast, but it’s starting to slow a little, and the words are forcing her to control her breath a little better, but she’s still deep in whatever she’s in right now, he can tell. He smells salt and knows tears are running down her face, and he has no idea how to help her, so he just sits there across from her with his hands covering hers and says a silent prayer that she’ll find her way back.

By the time she repeats the series for the seventh time, it’s clear that this isn’t ending anytime soon. Matt releases her hands long enough to fish some cash out of his wallet to cover the bill, then stands up and moves around the table to Jessica’s side.

“Staying here isn’t helping you,” he says. “Let’s go somewhere safe, okay?”

The word “safe” seems to break through. She nods dumbly and wipes her eyes and slides out of the booth.

* * *

There’s a little vest pocket park around the corner, little more than a large traffic island with a dozen trees and three benches to its name, but it’s a gray, chilly early-March day so nobody else is there. He takes her to the bench that seems the most private, tucked under a small stand of trees, and guides her to sit down.

“You’re having a panic attack,” he says gently.

“No shit,” she says. Her voice is distant and ragged and her adrenaline is pumping so hard she can’t sit still. Eventually she gives up and paces aimlessly instead, alternately crossing her arms and shaking them out, murmuring over and over again the series of streets that seem to anchor her to the real world.

“Tell me what you need, Jessica,” he says, catching her arm on her next circuit. She shakes him off with a strength that almost knocks him off his feet, and keeps circling.

“No touching. Got it,” he says. Christ, Karen would know what to do. What would she do? He tries to think, tries not to let Jessica’s panic infect him too. “How about I just talk instead? You don’t have to say anything back. I’m just going to talk, okay?”

She doesn’t reply and he can’t interpret the little huff she makes as an invitation or a refusal, so he just rolls with it. He tells her about the small family of squirrels currently napping in the tree to his left and the woman on the phone across the street complaining about the size of her engagement ring to a girlfriend, he thinks, or maybe a sister, who’s enduring the rant with sympathetic hums. He tells her about the flock of geese flying north overhead and the air slowly leaking out of a tire on the car parked somewhere on their left and describes an argument between two plumbers in a nearby basement bitching about which of them has to go back to the shop for a different part. He relays orders from the Starbucks down the block: triple espresso, double shot mocha grande whip, venti soy chai latte no sugar.

Whether that helps or the panic attack burns out on its own, he’s not sure, but eventually the pacing stops and she makes her way back to the bench. She leans forward, puts her face in her hands, and begins to cry.

He sits next to her and listens. Her heart has finally slowed and her blood pressure’s returned to normal. The sobs deepen her breath and seem to steady her even more than her mantra did. She’s turned some kind of corner, at least.

He decides to risk touching her again, tentatively placing his hand on her back. To his surprise, she leans into him for a moment, tucking her head against his shoulder. He slides his arm around her and before he can catch himself, he kisses the top of her head. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. “You’re safe.”

She doesn’t reply, but her crying begins to subside after that. Eventually she slides out from under his arm and stands. She puts her hands on her hips and paces a tight circle in front of the bench.

“Wow,” she says with a bitter laugh, and he can feel the heat of the embarrassed flush that’s come over her face. “I haven’t had one that bad in a _long_ time.”

“Does it happen a lot?”

“There’s a reason I’m almost never sober, Matthew,” she says sourly. She reaches into her jacket pocket, pulls out a flask, and takes a long drink. “Why don’t I see what else I can dig up about these dead assholes while you take Castle?”


	2. Visible Injuries are a Liability

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You just said you weren’t going to kill me."
> 
> “Didn’t say I wouldn’t hurt you."
> 
> “Careful, Frank. I might be rubbing off on you,”

Frank’s not as hard to find as he thinks he is. Or maybe he’s not trying to hide—Matt’s not sure. He’d clocked Frank’s van at the end of Karen’s block four weeks ago, as he climbed back out of Karen’s window after asking for her help with Fisk. He knew it was his because it smelled like a gun store, steel and black powder and mineral oil, and besides, he could hear the encrypted scanner humming quietly in the back. And Frank himself, his heart booming with the steadiest rage Matt had ever heard.

If Frank spotted him, though, he’d showed no sign of it. He didn’t get out of the van, didn’t turn on his engine, didn’t even seem to move. He’d just been watching.

Matt had been back to Karen’s once since then—as a civilian, the day before Nadeem testified, just to talk—and Frank was still there. Not parked in the same space—even vigilantes had to obey street-sweeping laws—but still within eyeshot of Karen’s front door.

Matt had said nothing to Karen about it either time. He knew instinctively that Frank was not a threat to her. He hadn’t missed the way Frank had attached to her in during the trial, and he hadn’t been entirely surprised when she’d told him how Frank had protected her from the Blacksmith’s assassins at her apartment and the diner.

Now, as they were trying to find a way to reconnect after Matt’s absence, Karen had finally told him how Frank had protected her from Lewis Wilson during the attack on Senator Ori’s suite at the Carlyle, and admitted that she’d helped Frank escape afterward.

_“There was never going to be another trial for Frank Castle,” Karen said, heading off his dismay before he could reply. “You know that. He’d have been dead before he was even booked.” She weighed the glass of whiskey in her hand, then turned to face him. “Maybe he doesn’t deserve a second chance on the outside, but he does deserve to live. I know you believe that.”_

_“You care about him,” he said._

_“I do. He’s never lied to me about who he is or what he does. I might not like it, I might think it’s wrong, but it’s real. And after all the bullshit I’ve had to wade through—I’ll take real any day of the week.”_

_“He’s murderer, Karen.”_

_“Yeah, well, so am I.” She threw back the glass and finished her whiskey in a single swallow._

_“Karen—”_

_“I care about you too, you know,” she said. “I care about your safety. I care about your happiness. Whatever or however your life turns out to be, I want it to be a good one, and I want to be a part of it somehow, but I can’t do that if you keep fucking lying to me, Matt. No more secrets.”_

_“I’ll try,” he’d promised._

Well. That didn’t last long.

It’s late. Karen’s in for the night—watching the end of the 11 o’clock news and talking to Ellison on the phone about how his rehab is coming along, whooping with genuine delight when he tells her he was able to walk a full mile on the treadmill without resting. Christ, if this is what helping looks like, Matt’s not sure what the hell he’s doing anymore.

He perches on the corner of the roof of her apartment building, studying the block for signs of Frank. There’s a patrol car double-parked right below him with its scanner going too, which is confusing matters, but he finally locates the van midway down the block toward the bakery where Karen sometimes used to get doughnuts for the office. The smell reminds him of the few perfect months they’d had together after Union Allied, after Foggy had made peace with Daredevil, and before the Castle trial, before Elektra.

Of course, he’d been lying to Karen then, too.

He moves from roof to roof until he’s right above the van. He’s about to jump down when a surprise punch from behind sends him sprawling, barking his chin on the tar paper.

“What do you want with her?” Frank asks.

Matt springs up and lunges at him, driving his shoulder against Frank’s and knocking him off balance just enough that he can sweep Frank’s feet from under him with a kick. He clutches fistfuls of Frank’s jacket and drops to the ground with him, pinning him with a knee and delivering three quick punches to his head.

But that doesn’t keep Frank down for long; he’s got three inches and thirty pounds on Matt, and the minute Matt stops hitting, Frank pushes him off and scrambles away to catch his breath. “Karen. What do you want with her?” he repeats.

“Not her. You,” Matt says, standing up and gingerly touching his chin. Blood, but not much. “Five bodies. Your weapon. Explain.”

“Not _my_ weapon, Red,” Frank says. He reaches into his pocket and before Matt can grab his billy clubs, he throws something toward him.

Matt catches it. It’s a misshapen finger of metal —a spent bullet, he realizes. “You think the only reason the cops aren’t looking at me is because they think I’m dead,” he says. He nods towards the bullet in Matt’s hand. “But it ain’t me. Compare the rifling on that to one of the bullets from the vics, and you’ll see.” He looks up and fixes Matt with a steady gaze. “Or whatever the fuck it is you do instead.”

An iceberg crashes into Matt’s chest and he stalls for a minute, turning the spent bullet over and over in his fingers. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Cut the bullshit, Murdock, I know who you are.”

_I know who you are. You protect shitbags._

Matt winces. He’d heard Frank’s breath catch in recognition the moment he’d started speaking in the hospital, but he’d hoped against hope that he’d been mistaken. “Does Karen know that you know?”

“Might surprise you to know that we don’t actually talk very much about you, Red.”

“How much _do_ you talk to her?”

“Not nearly as much as I’m talking to you right now.”

“Why are you following her? Is she in danger?”

“Heard Daredevil started killing people. She swore it wasn’t you, but I had to make sure I didn’t make a mistake saving your ass from those ninjas last winter.”

“Why did you? You know I’m going to put you back in prison first chance I get.”

“Because you’re important to her,” Frank said calmly “And I think you’re going to let me walk away tonight because you know I’m important to her, too.”

“You sure about that?”

Frank shrugs and grins. “Got a .45 in my left hand says I don’t have to be.”

The gun must have been up his sleeve, maybe mounted on some kind of bracket strapped to his arm, because Matt hears the catch release, hears the rough slip of steel against leather as the weapon drops into his hand.

“You just said you weren’t going to kill me,” Matt says.

“Didn’t say I wouldn’t hurt you,” Frank says.

“Careful, Frank. I might be rubbing off on you,” Matt says with a sarcastic smile and a casual shift of weight to, he hopes, mask the movement of his hand to his billy club holster.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Red,” Frank says. He raises his arm and Matt whips out his clubs, but all Frank does is shake the gun back into the apparatus under his sleeve. “Five shots, five kills, no collaterals in a chaotic urban environment means you’re not looking for a gangster who just managed to get his hands on a big gun. I don’t even think you’re looking at police. Nah, this guy’s military, probably special forces. Not too young, either—it takes years to get that good.”

“Sounds a hell of a lot like we’re talking about you,” Matt says wryly.

Frank laughs bitterly. “I got something else for you. I’m gonna reach into my jacket, okay?”

His heartbeat’s steady. Matt holsters the clubs and holds his hands out to his side to prove to Frank that he believes him.

Frank takes a square envelope out of his chest pocket and throws it onto the tarpaper between them.

“Personnel files for a military contractor called Anvil. Got shut down because they were shady as fuck. Most of their, ah, _more specialized_ operators scattered, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some of them were able to find other organizations in this city to transfer their skills to.”  

“How’d you get ahold of these?”

“I got a friend who’s good with computers.”

“Why give them to me? I thought you’d be itching at the chance to take more assholes off the street for good.”

“Who says that’s the only copy?” Frank asks. “Truth is, I’m on my way out West for a while. Got a chance to make a fresh start and I aim to make good on it.” His heart’s telling the truth.

“Did it work, Frank?” Matt asks. “Killing all those people? Did it fix you?”

Frank gives a bitter laugh. “They killed my kids, Red, and there ain’t nothin’ in the world can fix that. But yeah—it felt good to put ‘em all down just the same.”

Suddenly Matt wants to tell him everything, how close he’d come to killing Fisk, how much he’s begun to understand where Frank’s coming from. But he doesn’t. He just raises his hand in farewell as Frank steps onto the ladder leading down to the fire escape.

“Don’t follow me, Red,” he says, and Matt suspects the path he’s referring to isn’t the Lincoln Tunnel. “Hang onto your people. Karen, Nelson. Keep ‘em close, yeah?”

* * *

The next morning he’s standing at his kitchen counter, drinking a cup of coffee, an unsent message to his group text with Foggy and Karen waiting on his phone. After a minute he shakes his head and orders the phone to delete it. Then he dictates it again, deletes it again, then begins to dictate it a third time when the phone rings.

_Foggy. Foggy. Foggy._

He instinctively wants to let it go to voicemail but forces himself to answer.

“Hey, Fog,” he says.

“I come bearing bagels. Buzz me in.”

When Foggy gets upstairs, he shoves the bag of bagels into Matt’s hand without so much as a hello so he can shuck his coat.

“Good morning to you, too,” Matt says, following him down the hall to the kitchen. “Coffee?”

“Yeah.”

As Matt hands Foggy a mug, Foggy takes his chin in his hand and turns his face into the sunlight so he can inspect his cut.

“This gonna be part of the deal now, too?” Matt asks, hoping against hope that he hasn’t managed to entirely burn down the bridge between them.

“Visible injuries are a liability,” Foggy says, taking the coffee. “You need a better helmet. Something with a full face mask if you can.”

“I can’t. It fucks with my senses too much,” Matt says. “I’ll be more careful.”

“Stop lying, Matt,” Foggy says, but there’s no anger in his voice, just resignation. “Better helmet. Better armor while you’re at it.”

“Better armor I can do,” Matt concedes, waving Foggy over to the table. “I’ll talk to my guy about the helmet.”

“Full disclosure,” Foggy says, selecting a bagel.

“Fog—”

“Full disclosure, Matt,” Foggy repeats. “Karen and I talked about this last night: Full disclosure as a condition of partnership. Otherwise, the best we can do is hire you as a contractor for low-stakes shit that won’t get appealed or overturned if you get disbarred.”

Matt takes a sip of his coffee to hide his dismay at the prospect of spending the rest of his career drafting wills and no-fault divorce agreements. “I’ll think about it.”


	3. Process of Elimination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t like loud noises, okay? Or, like, sharp noises.”
> 
> “Like gunshots?”
> 
> “Like the sound of me punching your face.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Minor canon divergence for one of the characters, explained in endnotes.)

He finds Jessica passed out on her sofa, enough whiskey exuding from her pores that he’s pretty sure she’d flunk a breathalyzer just by touching it.

“Hey,” Matt says, shaking her awake. “I brought coffee and an egg-and-cheese roll.”

“Aren’t you a sweetheart,” she mumbles, rolling over onto her back for a minute before dragging herself up. “What time is it?”

“Little after ten.” Matt hands her the coffee and the roll and then tosses the disc Frank gave him onto her desk. “Got a lead for you.”

Jessica is too busy wolfing down the sandwich to ask what it is. Her stomach’s growling again, which means she probably hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before. He wanders into the kitchen to take inventory, and finds nothing but half a box of cereal, a carton of nearly expired milk, four bottles of Pedialyte, and 23 cans of cheap beer.

Food, coffee, and a shower seem to revive her considerably. She accepts the Pedialyte Matt offers her with a rueful laugh, like getting hammered the night before had just been an accident, and proceeds to chug it in seconds.

“Okay,” she says, crushing the empty bottle and tossing it into the recycle bin. “Let’s talk leads.”

Turns out she’d managed to chase down one of her own before passing out yesterday: All the vics had played lacrosse in high school. They’d all gone to different schools in the Tri-State area and hadn’t all graduated the same year—but there was one year they’d all overlapped: 1998.  

“You think they crossed paths at a tournament or a training camp?” Matt asks.

“Aw, look who went to Harvard.”

“Columbia,” Matt says crisply.

“Maybe if you’d gotten into Harvard you wouldn’t have asked such a dumb question.” She slips the disc out of the envelope and pops it into her laptop. “Now let’s see what goodies you’ve got for me.”

There are more than a hundred personnel files on the disc, and they’re organized alphabetically, with no clear way to sort by skill or service record. They’re going to have to go through them one by one. Jessica copies the data onto a second disc so she and Matt can divide and conquer.

It’s slow going, and listening to the droning robotic voice on his laptop reading form fields to him for hours on end surely qualifies as one of the outer circles of hell, but they’re gradually pulling together a list of suspects.

“Don’t suppose it occurred to you that Frank Castle is sending us on the world’s most boring goose chase so he can get another step or two ahead of us, did you?” Jessica asks with a sigh. She stalks into the kitchen and comes back with a couple of beers.  

Matt knows better, but he touches his watch anyway. It’s not even noon. He takes one of the beers anyway. It’s probably pointless, but surely having one less in the house can’t be bad for her. “He was telling the truth,” he says, cracking the can open.

The noise startles her so badly she drops her own can. It rolls, fizzing and sloshing—but blessedly unopened—until it comes to rest against the wall.

“Jesus Christ,” she grumbles, turning to retrieve it.

“You okay?” Matt asks.

“Again with the stupid questions, Murdock,” she says, taking the beer back to the fridge and getting another. Opening her own doesn’t bother her as much, but he can still hear her heart spike a little at the sound.

“I don’t want to pry, but if we’re going to work together, I’ve got to know what sets you off.”

“I don’t like loud noises, okay? Or, like, sharp noises.”

“Like gunshots?”

“Like the sound of me punching your face,” she says darkly, returning to her desk. “You find any snipers yet?”

Matt takes a sip of beer and sighs. “Just one so far. You?”

“Five,” she says. “Pick up the pace, blind boy.”

“Fuck you,” Matt says amiably, popping his earbud back in. “I can’t read as fast as you on this thing.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you,” she snaps. “So stop feeling sorry for me, okay?”

“I don’t. Stop deliberately confusing concern with pity,” Matt retorts. “God forbid you acknowledge that what you do matters to other people.”

“Says the man who told his friends to let a goddamn _building_ fall on him,” Jessica says, and her heart’s leaping all over the place, scrabbling for purchase on slippery feelings. She takes a long drink of beer and clenches her fist so hard Matt can hear her knuckles crack. “Did it ever even _occur_ to you that your noble sacrifice might not have felt all that noble to the rest of us? We _let you die_ , Matt, and we have to live with that for the rest of our lives. If you want to have a conversation about how personal choices can destroy other people, take a fucking number, Murdock, because you’re the last person on Earth who gets to lecture me on that.”

He chews on his lip and nods. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I put you in a terrible position and forced you to make a decision that went against everything you believed in, and it wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair.”

“Stop agreeing with me, shithead,” Jessica says, crushing the empty can and throwing it at his head with surprising speed. When it strikes his face he knows he’ll have another bruise he’ll have to explain to Foggy in the morning.

“Stay angry with me as long as you want,” Matt says, rubbing his cheekbone. “I deserve it. But let’s catch this asshole before he kills someone else, okay?”

Later that afternoon, Matt orders them a pizza. Extra-large, extra toppings, with a side of breadsticks to boot. He knows if he shows up with a bag of groceries, she’ll just throw them back in his face, but maybe she’ll accept leftovers.

Well, at least she doesn’t argue when he puts them in her fridge. So that’s a start.

* * *

They work the case.

The $200 Matt dropped on Jessica’s desk just sits there unclaimed, and as 24 hours stretches into 48, then 72, and so on, there’s no talk of charging more. The box containing the scarf stays in the trash can, too.

Jess is still badly hung over every morning when Matt arrives, but every morning after he coaxes her into the shower he checks the fridge. She’s eaten a few slices of the leftover pizza, there are three fewer of Tuesday’s leftover samosas than there were the day before, and the extra pint of lo mein from yesterday’s lunch is much lighter than it was when he first put it away.

After the pizza delivery guy’s knock sent Jess into another frozen, sweaty recitation of her childhood neighborhood’s streets, Matt’s taken to opening the office door as soon as he hears the elevator door open.

Jessica does what Jessica does best and starts calling every high school lacrosse league and club in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, shamelessly posing as a college friend of the most recently identified victim—Chad Covington, killed four weeks before—looking for photos to collect for a memorial service.

Meanwhile, Matt runs down records on the eight potential Anvil snipers that fit Frank’s profile. Three of them have gone through passport control at JFK over the past six weeks, bound for Istanbul, Medellin, and Kinshasa. One’s been in Riker’s on a domestic violence charge for the past three months, and another’s been hooked up since before Christmas with another outfit based out of Tucson that mostly works the border.

That leaves three with last known addresses in New York City: Kevin Rodriguez, a 34-year-old former Marine scout sniper (even the same unit as Frank, Matt notes grimly); Jacob Gurewicz, a 40-year-old ex-SEAL; and Mary Walker, a 37-year-old former Army sniper last attached to a JSOC mission in Sokovia. None of them has any obvious link to the victims: None of them come from the New York area, and none of them have ever played lacrosse. Aside from Rodriguez, none of them are even the right age.

Until Jess can find the missing lacrosse link, it’s all they’ve got to go on.

* * *

At night they hunt. Last known addresses aren’t the same as current addresses, and they’re frustrated but not entirely surprised when all three apartments turn up sniper-free. Jessica at least manages to wheedle Rodriguez and Gurewicz’s forwarding addresses from the building super (Rodriguez) and the nosy next-door neighbor (Gurewicz), which is how they’ve come to be standing across the street from a run-down three-story apartment building on the last ungentrified block along the Gowanus Canal.

Matt isn’t suited up—it’s barely 7 o’clock, and besides, he needs his civvies for this one. Jessica, on the other hand, is in full costume: Charcoal slacks, black wool turtleneck, hair done up in a tight bun, pearl earrings, teeth freshly brushed to mask the vodka on her breath and a spritz of perfume for good measure.

“Which sounds scarier—gonorrhea or chlamydia?” Matt asks, tucking his glasses into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

“HIV,” Jessica says, taking a clipboard and a handful of Health Department pamphlets from the leather briefcase bag slung diagonally across her chest. “Tell them a former sexual partner’s been diagnosed and provided their name for notification. Usually upsets them enough that they invite you in to discuss options, and that gives you a chance to look around.”

“That’s—cruel,” Matt says.

“So is murdering people.” She stuffs Matt’s cane into the outer pocket, frowning at the tight fit and turning the bag around so the bulge isn’t facing out. 

“Quick, someone’s coming down the stairs,” Matt says, and they hurry across the street so they are reaching for the front door just as an old woman is pushing it open to leave.

Matt grins and holds the door open for her, grandly sweeping his hand out toward the street. “Allow me, madam,” he says, and makes a goofy bow to give him an excuse to avoid eye contact.

“Well aren’t you a blast from the past,” the woman coos, then shoots a wicked smile at Jessica. “Where’d you dig this one up?”

“Great big hole in the ground,” she says with a little laugh.

Rodriguez lives on the top floor—they both note that the door to the attic stairs is unlocked—in the apartment facing the canal. Jessica shoves the clipboard and pen into Matt’s hand before she knocks. “Pretend you’re taking notes,” she says. “Keep your eyes busy.”

Matt takes them gratefully. “He’s home, by the way,” he says. “Watching the Rangers game.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

Jessica takes a deep breath and knocks loudly on the door.

“He’s coming,” Matt murmurs, tilting his face down toward the clipboard and readying his pen. But something’s not right about the way he’s walking—a metallic creak followed by a stomp. Suddenly Matt’s brain begins to spin. Did his file say he had a prosthetic leg? Would Anvil even hire an amputee?

It clicks two seconds before Rodriguez opens the door: He’s on crutches, with a plaster cast running from hip to toe. Matt doesn’t need super-senses to hear Jessica’s sigh.

Less than two minutes after knocking, they’re already back in the elevator, having sternly warned their now not-suspect about the dangers of unprotected sex. “No way he was running around on rooftops in the rain four nights ago,” Jessica says.

“Or four weeks ago,” Matt says. “His cast reeked. He’s had it for a while.”

“Your nose is creepy as hell, Murdock, you know that?”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

She takes his folded cane out and playfully whacks it against his stomach, but she still hits him hard enough force him back a step. He gets the message loud and clear: _You try that on me, you’ll wish you hadn’t_.

The sun had gone down while they were on the train, and it’s threatening rain again, but they decide to keep going. Gurewicz lives in a basement apartment beneath a Greenpoint duplex, but they’re still at least half a block away when Matt realizes something is terribly wrong.

“You know my creepy nose?” he murmurs, pulling Jessica to a halt on the sidewalk. “Be glad for it now. Because there’s a dead body in there.” He gives a cautious sniff, then swallows to keep his gorge from rising. Suddenly a memory bubbles up of Stick forcing him to lean over an open sewer drain, to hold a lemon slice in his mouth, to stick his hand into the split-open guts of a cat Stick had killed just for this purpose: _Observe your sensations without judgement, Matty. You don’t learn how to overcome your disgust, you’ll lose your mind by the time you’re twelve._

“Is there anyone else in the building?” Jessica asks.

Matt listens carefully. “No.”

Matt folds up his cane and jams it into Jessica’s bag, and they take advantage of the new-fallen dark to dart up through the alley alongside the house to the back yard. The smell is stronger here; the body is on this side of the house.

The door to the basement apartment is down a half-flight of stairs. Jessica pulls the sleeve of her sweater over her hand and tries the door.

“It’s been jimmied open,” she says softly. “You’re sure we’re alone?”

“Yeah.” He moves in front of her. She puts her hand on his shoulder and follows him into the apartment. There are only a few small windows—little more than ventilation transoms near the ceiling—but they agree without speaking that they don’t even want to risk anyone outside catching a glimpse of the light of the flash on Jess’ phone until they absolutely have to use it.

The apartment’s just a small studio, and they come across the body quickly—in the bathtub. It’s already cool.  

“No windows in here,” Jessica says, taking out her phone. “I’m going to use a light now.”

“He’s been stabbed,” Matt says flatly. “I can smell blood but not gunpowder.”

“Gutted like a fish,” Jessica mutters, holding her hand over her mouth and nose while passing her flashlight over the body. “Even I can smell that.”

They need to get out of the apartment quickly – it’s only a matter of time before his landlords come home, and Jess agrees that it’s not going to be long before they smell him, too – but they do a cursory search of the place first.

Gurewicz lived simply: Just a few changes of clothes in the bureau, not much food in the pantry. His weapon and ammunition were still in the closet; his bed made with military tidiness. There’s a large TV and a game console, hand controllers neatly wrapped up in their charging cords on top. There were no books, no photos except for one.

“Huh,” Jessica says, picking up the photo. “That’s the next-door neighbor from his old place.”

“Describe the picture, please,” Matt reminds her.

“Sorry,” Jessica says. “Looks like a photo of a military unit. Can’t tell where they are—looks like they’re just standing in front of a shot-up concrete wall. They’re wearing green camo—so not desert, anyway. Gurewicz is in the back row and the woman from next door is sitting on the ground in front with her sniper rifle across her lap.”

“Maybe Anvil sent them on a mission together.”

“This isn’t Anvil,” Jessica says. She turns the light carefully on the photo and holds it close to her eye. “These are Army patches.” She sucks in her breath hard. “I can read the name on her uniform. It’s Mary Walker.”

“Cross-reference service records?”

“You read my mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nope, there's nothing to suggest Mary Walker was ever an Anvil contractor. But it worked for the story!


	4. Fish in a Barrel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He squares up to ram the door again when Jess roughly shoves him aside and lifts the door off its hinges. “Exterior doors open _out_ , moron,” she says bluntly. “Fire code.”

They leave the apartment as they found it—door ajar and all—and head back toward the subway. It’s a long walk, especially on what’s become a cold night, but they’re grateful for the air. The smells of the city—the garbage, the diesel, the sweat and vomit and dogshit and the sharp chemical reek of the wastewater treatment plant—are hardly fresh, but at least it’s not death, and Matt gladly breathes it in.

They’re halfway to the train, walking along a gloomy, industrial stretch of road near the Pulaski Bridge when Matt hears a sharp metallic click coming from the roof of a warehouse to their right. He has just enough time to grab Jess and pull her into the street before the .50 caliber bullet explodes a tiny hole in the sidewalk where they’d been about to step.

“Are you okay?” he asks Jessica, hustling her between two parked cars for cover just as another bullet finds the pavement where they’d just stood. But he knows she’s not—her heart is pounding a panicked tattoo in her chest and her breath has gone fast and shallow.

“It’s okay, Jess,” he murmurs with a calm he doesn’t remotely feel. “We’re going to be okay. Say your streets.”

For a moment he doesn’t know what to do. Jessica’s down and he doesn’t have his mask, much less his armor, so the smart play would be to get her the fuck out of there and regroup somewhere safe.

On the other hand, the sniper is _right above them_. He can hear a heart beating with impossible steadiness as the gun shifts, and he covers Jess as the bullet strikes the car. He runs his hand up along the door to feel the concave hole where the bullet punched through the steel. He may not have a second chance at the shooter.

He scans the wall behind them and locates a door about twenty yards to their left. He makes a choice.

“We have to move,” he whispers urgently to Jessica. “Can you run?”

She nods and clutches the lapels of his jacket.

He tunes in to the sniper again. There’s movement on the roof—the shooter is shifting position to get a better shot. This close to the wall, they’re hard to hit—but not impossible. Still, it buys them a few seconds, and they need to make them count.

“Now,” Matt hisses, and they sprint for the door. It’s locked, of course, and solid steel. Matt uselessly rams his shoulder against it.  He can hear the shooter settling the weapon to take aim. They’re fish in a barrel right now; if he can’t get them inside right now they are going to die on this sidewalk.

He squares up to ram the door again when Jess roughly shoves him aside and lifts the door off its hinges. “Exterior doors open _out_ , moron,” she says bluntly. “Fire code.”

“Welcome back,” Matt says, pushing her inside.

“The running helped,” she says. “But let’s get this bitch before she shoots again.”

The warehouse is long abandoned, little more than a vast concrete shell with a flight of open steel stairs to the roof. She’s been living there, they can tell—there’s a cot and a sleeping bag, some crates, a card table with a camping lantern on it. Matt barely has time to realize the fact that she probably killed the next-door neighbor in Gurewicz’s old building, too.

They climb the stairs as quietly as they can, but Walker’s waiting for them at the roof access door when they burst through. A kick to Matt’s hip sends him spinning, but Jessica, coming up right behind him, rounds on her almost immediately and sends her sailing across the roof.

She lands in an expert tuck and roll, and leaps to her feet, a knife in her hand. “Heard you were looking for me,” Walker says sweetly. “Bad idea.”

An eyeblink later, the knife is solidly in Jessica’s chest and she’s flat on her back gasping for air.

Matt knows he’s risking exposure, knows attacking her is the dumbest thing he can do, but fuck it, he lunges forward and tackles her. He gets her pinned, but just for a moment; Walker’s small, but she’s fast and she’s _trained_ , Christ she’s good, and he only gets two punches in before she’s free again.

“Not bad for a blind guy,” she says with a laugh like silver, planting a kick squarely against his chest, but she grabs his arm and lets the momentum pull him off-balance and stumbling across the asphalt. Before he can scrabble up she kicks him in the shoulder, to knock him onto his side, and then in the head, to stun him. Once he’s good and disoriented, she plants her knee on his chest, whips a small pistol out from her ankle holster, and jams it up under his chin.

Jessica’s back on her feet somehow, knife still in her chest, and rushes Walker from behind. Walker dodges her but Jessica’s fast, too, and grabs her arm and flings her off the roof.

“Oh, Jesus,” Matt says, and they scramble to the edge of the roof just in time to see Walker dragging herself into a Jeep parked in the alley and peeling out toward the bridge.

Matt’s about to jump down when Jessica grabs his arm and then stumbles against him.

“Jess!”

“I’m okay,” she insists, struggling to stand, but it’s a losing battle and eventually she lets Matt carry her down the stairs to Walker’s nest.

He lays her on the cot and goes searching for medical supplies. There isn’t much, but he returns with a clean t-shirt, a roll of duct tape, and a bottle of vodka. It’ll have to do.

He tears Jessica’s sweater open around the knife, then gently eases it out. He douses the wound with the vodka and packs it with the clean shirt before strapping it in place with the tape.

“I’ve got to get you to the hospital,” Matt says, but she just waves him off and sits up.

“Give me that,” she says, wresting the vodka from his hand and taking a long pull. “I have super healing. I’ll be fine by morning.”

“Well, at least sit for a while,” Matt says. “She’s not coming back. Let’s see if she’s left us any clues.”

“Can you turn on the light, at least?” Jessica asks irritably, and Matt fiddles with the knob on the lantern until he feels it warm.

“Holy shit,” she murmurs.

“What?”

“She drew all over the walls. Designs, portraits, cityscapes—it’s like a cave painter went to art school and then lost her fucking mind.”

“Anything look relevant to the case?”

“Hell if I know,” she says, standing gingerly. “Can you get my phone from my bag? I want to take some photos.”   

He fishes the phone out of the bag and tosses it to her. While she’s shooting, Matt searches the rest of the warehouse. He can smell paper and photo ink somewhere nearby, and he’s willing to lay even money that it’s her mission brief.

There’s not much left to search—it’s empty except for Walker’s belongings—but he sifts through the contents of her footlocker and all the crates anyway to see if he could find anything that shouldn’t be there. And yet there isn’t.

He closes his eyes—Stick always insisted on it, no matter how little a difference it made—and focused all his senses on the scent. It’s coming from the table, which has nothing on it except the lantern.

Unless—he runs his hands beneath the table and finds a heavy cardboard portfolio duct-taped to the underside.

He peels the tape away to free it and holds it out toward Jessica. “Jackpot,” he says. 

* * *

It’s well past midnight by the time they get back to Jessica’s apartment. They’re exhausted but too wired to rest; instead, they collapse on her sofa with the last of the leftover pizza and open the file. It doesn’t tell them why Mary killed Gurewicz—or, Matt was beginning to suspect, hurt Rodriguez—but it does at least tell them who her next targets were going to be.

There were nine in total, all of whom attended the Tri-State Varsity All-Star Lacrosse Camp in 1997. Four of whom, as far as they know, are still alive.

“What’s the connection to Walker?”

“None,” Jessica says, shuffling through the papers. “She was just a hired gun. The client, however—” she pauses, reading the brief. “Jesus.”

“What?”

“The client was a teammate, Ryan Carrazzo. According to the brief, he says he was repeatedly abused and humiliated at age 15 as part of a hazing ritual at camp, and that when he reported it, it was covered up.”

"What kind of abuse?" Matt asks, though he's not sure he wants the answer.

"The kind that makes you want to kill people, Harvard."

Matt’s words fail him. “I almost don’t want to give this to Brett,” he admits, finally.

“We—don’t have to,” Jessica says tentatively.

_Don’t follow me, Red._

Matt stands up stiffly and reaches for the folder. “I’ll be back in an hour. Two, tops.”

“I don’t need a babysitter, Murdock.”

“I know,” Matt says, shrugging on his jacket and unfolding his cane. “How about a friend?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jessica groans. “Go home. Get some sleep. We can debrief in the morning."


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You, ah, got some time for a long story this morning?”

He wakes up to the smell of coffee and a crick in his neck that that won’t let him turn his head to the left for love or money. When he'd returned from the 15th Precinct, he'd offered to take the sofa, but she'd kissed him hungrily and led him into the bedroom. He was afraid of reopening her wound, but she wasn't; she didn't hold back. He didn't argue—he needed this, needed to be touched, needed to be wanted. Needed to feel a friendly heart beating next to his. The way her fingers dug into his back, he was pretty sure she needed it, too. 

“I’m all out of salted caramel lattes,” she says, handing him a mug. She's showered and dressed, he notices, and the sun has begun to warm a large square on the bed. “Hope you like it black and instant.”

At this point he’ll take anything with caffeine in it. He eases himself up to sit and takes a cautious sip. It’s terrible, but it works. “What time is it?”

“A little after nine. I figured I’d let you sleep.”

“Thanks,” he says, taking another sip of coffee and wishing desperately for a toothbrush. Five hours was par for him, but he didn’t feel like he’d slept at all. “How are you feeling?”

“Barely a scratch now. I heal fast.”

“Good.”

“About last night—I’m sorry,” Jessica says, sitting next to him. “I could’ve gotten us killed.”

“Don’t apologize for being injured,” Matt says.

“I meant before the knife.”

“I know,” Matt says, taking another sip of the atrocious coffee.

Jessica nods and studies the mug in her hand. He can smell the double shot of whiskey she’s topped it off with. “You, ah, got some time for a long story this morning?”

Only then does he notice she’s wearing the scarf.

* * *

It’s past one in the afternoon by the time he gets home, and all he wants to do is shower and sleep. But before he does, he opens the group text with Foggy and Karen. Karen’s been giving him his space, but space-giving is an alien concept to Foggy, and the texts from him have piled up like autumn leaves over the past week.

_Full disclosure, Matt._

_Let us in._

_Let us help you._

_We want to help you._

_We’re not going to judge you._

_We love you._

_Please._

His unsent message to them is still idling as a draft.

Mary Walker has seen his face. It’s only a matter of time before he figures out who he is, before she figures out who matters to him. He takes a deep breath and sends the message:

_OK._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NaTak, I hope you enjoyed this, and that you have a wonderful holiday season, however and whatever you celebrate! xo


End file.
